Money, food and the universe

[Xel]

Track down a copy of "the Alpha Strategy" on the Web.

I think it dates from the inflationary 1970s. Basically it says on "buy stuff ".

A succinct yet still garbled post! My only excuse is that I sent it from my phone.

Anyhow, I've found a link to "The Alpha Strategy - The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense for the Small Saver and Investor":

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6230684/The-Alpha-Strategy

[adrian007]

Jansman

My 2p

I'm a recently 'retired' IFA - I'd recommend seeing one who is of the non stitchy up variety and asking to get your pension looked at.

Pensions sold in the 1980's were bad compared to todays pensions, might eb worth you extracting your cash from the bad ones and moving it to half decent one. The IFA will be able to tell you.

Clearly I can't help...but there are decent IFA's around. If you don't want to see an IFA, Hargreaves Lansdown are a direct route to getting out of a bad pension.

If you were properly badly advised, say if you were advised to opt out of a company pension, seek compensation.

Adrian

[jansman]

Jansman

My 2p

I'm a recently 'retired' IFA - I'd recommend seeing one who is of the non stitchy up variety and asking to get your pension looked at.

Pensions sold in the 1980's were bad compared to todays pensions, might eb worth you extracting your cash from the bad ones and moving it to half decent one. The IFA will be able to tell you.

Clearly I can't help...but there are decent IFA's around. If you don't want to see an IFA, Hargreaves Lansdown are a direct route to getting out of a bad pension.

If you were properly badly advised, say if you were advised to opt out of a company pension, seek compensation.

Adrian

Thankyou. I just knew an IFA would pop up!
No disrespect, but I trust no one, especially money men. I won't go into detail, but the projection I have been given, I may as well stash it under the bed.
I am now looking at putting cash into precious metals and antiques of all things. My Mothers new husband is a retired antique dealer, and he lives well on a small pension- if you get my drift.

Back on topic though. Redskies made the point that it is better to have a sustainable home and foodsource. I have the property, I have the food producing skills and half the area I need. The fuel is what I need to pin down. We have wood heat, no problem. That is well sorted. Electricity is the one.
I hate to have to disregard the banking sector, but they go from fraud to mis selling to sub prime mortgages, back to mega bonuses for all of the above. The financial sector basically lives off the money we mere mortals sweat to earn.
At this point, I own my own property, have no debt , some cash in the bank- but above all a lot of tangible resources. If I make mistakes, at least I have not paid someone else to do it!

[redskies]

You're further ahead than us, but, if it all falls over tomorrow we have options others probably won't have, and I'm fairly confident we'd be just fine. We'd struggle a bit at the beginning, but we live in a good, strong community, and we're contributing members, so it'd only be for a bit, til it all got settled down and the systems already in place bumped up to cope.

Re electric. Have you looked at things like gassifiers and vertical axis turbines? Two things I'd like to have at least a start of this year. Depends how busy we both are at work, and at the moment, flat out is an accurate description!

[Arzosah]

jansman, as to fuel, I know this is a bit left field, but being lurgified I've been watching a lot of tv at the moment - and I just watched Kevin Mccloud building his shed in a field thing - he made a biodigester from offcuts of sewer pipe and fuelled it with slurry made from human, lion and dog poo

Obviously, you need a field, but his point that we throw away a tremendous amount of energy was well made

[pseudonym]

Obviously, you need a field,

And a lion.

[Hamradioop]

THE Chinese were doing it 3 000 years ago … The West “discovered” it in the late 1700s and now you can do it in your own back yard.

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?show ... d%5D=81350

[Briggs 2.0]

Going up a few posts to the topic of pensions not being as fruitful as we all hoped for, we made the decision to convert my pension into a SIPP, which means we have control of the investment, not some faceless goon in a suit investing our money for us. We listened to a lot of advice from such goons about what would be the best pension investment, most advised us to purchase a commercial property such as a shop or office but we went for something slightly different - my pension purchased a woodland which will gradually increase in value but more importantly provides us with a sustainable fuel source for all the heat and hot water we need, saving us £1400 per annum which is re-invested into more cost-saving preps. The FC also financially incentivise us to manage the woodland so that's a win-win. We will consider living there when I retire so it's a win-win-win.

I've tried planting veg in the woodland to be more self-sufficient but all I seem to be doing is making the local wildlife more self-sufficient so I have to revise my crop protection as a priority next year. I noticed PreppingSu uses some neat, robust looking poly-tunnels that may be more rodent/deer-proof. If anyone has any ideas on how to make root crops deer-proof I'm all ears. Suggesting I buy a lion will work but it comes with it's own set of challenges....

My bug-bear are the rising cost of utility bills. I've worked on cutting my home's water consumption by half, however, the standing charge now forms quite a large chunk of the bill so to invest more will not reduce my bill, unless I manage to get completely off-grid. We have no gas supply and I've reduced my heating bill to zero but it's the electricity bill that's twisting my melon at the moment. Solar panels and switching as much of my demand to 12v is a major priority.

[MarketRaisen]

I've a fair old stack of silver (Old pre 1920 shillings and threepence) that I'm thinking about getting rid of to free up funds for more practical uses.

Not that I feel im not prepared enough, its just sitting looking at a box of Silver coins gathering dust makes my eyes hurt.

I guess the price of silver over the next couple of months will dictate.

I have some South African Gold aswell, unless somebody offers me a Michelle Keegan lookalike for the night, I won't be parting with it ever.

Metals have their place in the event of a slow economic collapse but in the long run are about as useful as 2p pieces are to us now.

[cpslashm]

unless somebody offers me a Michelle Keegan lookalike for the night, I won't be parting with it ever.

Why - does she look like she can she light a fire in the rain?